Defeated theology

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Von Balthasar says that the “ethos of the theology in Bonaventure is . . . quite different from the ethos in Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophical point of view tries to reflect the order of the world as rigorously and clearly as possible. In Bonaventure, there is something defeated from the very start; theology is an imposing upon that which is not to be imposed upon, a tireless proposing of new ordering, counting, classifying, gathering the ‘blossoming wilderness’ into bouquets. But... Read more

Articulated time

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

According to Pickstock, Augustine’s musical ontology is not a mere subordination of space to time, or a univocal “Dionysian flow”: “just as important as the priority of time, for Augustine, is the insistence on articulation into distinct musical units or phrases, the very move which allows a stress upon the simultaneity of harmony, whether in memory or in the actuality of performed polyphony.” This double stress on temporality and harmony is enabled by centrality of silence, of the caesura between note... Read more

Creation ex nihilo

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Nothing comes from nothing. That seems obvious, and Christians have traditionally had some difficulty explaining why creatio ex nihilo is a defensible violation of that basic principle. According to Catherine Pickstock, Augustine viewed creation ex nihilo as the most rational position. All around us, “things are continuously coming to be , and continuously emerging from points that are nothing.” Augustine appeals to geometric and mathematical realities to make the point; yes, the point: Points are nothings, without extension, and yet... Read more

Secular

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

In responding to Milbank’s analysis of Augustine on the secular, RA Markus ( Christianity And the Secular (Blessed Pope John XXIII Lecture Series in Theology and Culture) ) borrows MJ Hollerich’s summary of Milbank that there is no “neutral public sphere in which people can act politically without reference to ultimate ends.” Markus thinks this formulation entangles two issues that need to be disentangled. (more…) Read more

Kantradictions

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Jean-Marie Schaeffer ( Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger (New French Thought Series) has a blast pointing out the contradictions in Kant’s aesthetics. Most of them arise from Kant’s insistence that the judgment of taste is founded on “the form of a finality” that excludes any specific end. That is, aesthetic judgment responds to the sheer form of finality, not to any particular purpose of the object judged. This is in a sense just... Read more

Effects and Causes

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Can effects double as causes? Kant, still working with some form of final causality, thinks so: There are cases when “the thing that for the moment is designated effect deserves none the less, if we take the series regressively, to be called the cause of the thing of which it was said to be the effect . . . . Thus a house is certainly the cause of the money that is received as rent, but yet, conversely, the representation... Read more

Gnostikant

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Evidence that Hamann had Kant right: In explaining taste as a common sense, he notes that this common sense of beauty can be arrived at by a process of stripping off whatever belongs to our perception and prejudice. That is, we put “ourselves in the position of every one else, as a result of a mere abstraction from the limitations which contingently affect our own estimate.” How can we abstract our judgment from our own limitations? This is “effected by... Read more

Light

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

The premise of Bonaventure’s “reduction of arts to theology” is that all knowledge, skill, perception is about light. Good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of Lights, James says, and Bonaventure sees that light refracted into four types of light. Some are obvious: the inner light of reason that yields philosophical knowledge that the “higher light” of grace and Scripture. More unexpected is Bonaventure’s inclusion of “the external light, or the light of mechanical skill” and “the lower... Read more

Soul on soul

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

God alone, Augustine says, can act directly on souls. We cannot, but that doesn’t mean we can’t act on other souls. In Augustine’s anthropology, this is done through the body, by “signals conveyed by the physical body.” Such physical signs might be gestures, facial expressions, or “conventional indications such as words.” We act through bodies on souls when “we give orders and apply persuasion, and carry out all other actions by which souls act concerning or with other souls.” All... Read more

Thin souls

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Augustine, of course, says that pride is the beginning of revolt and sin. A prideful soul is one that refuses to recognize that “the whole quality of the soul’s existence is from God” and therefore that it is “enlivened in mental activity and in self-consciousness by God’s presence.” God, Augustine assumes, is within, but pride seeks what’s outside, and as the prideful soul moves “toward the external” it becomes “empty within” as it exists “less and less fully”: “To move... Read more